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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7739329" data-attributes="member: 42582">I agree that (as a general rule) when playing a RPG it helps to stick to the expectations created by the rules (especially if playing among strangers or in the early stages of a campaign, ie before distinctive table expectations have been able to emerge).But isn't this thread about what those expectations might be?What I was trying to get at with my post comparing strength, speed and courage was that (I think) there is nothing distinctive about courage rather than (say) strength being a key component of my character conception, and so nothing distinctive about mechanics that put pressure on my PC's courage rather than my PC's strength. Both force me to ask (putting it into in-character first person) "Am I really who I thought I was?"What the actual mechanics should be whereby that pressure is applied is a further matter. I generally prefer systems where (1) the players have choices about resource allocation so they can try and preserve their conception of their character; and (2) I also like an approach to narration that tends to permt this. An example of what I mean by (2): one time in my 4e game the paladin of the Raven Queen got turned into a frog; mechanically, the duration of the effect was one round; when the PC turned back, the PC swore the Raven Queen's vengeance upon the NPC transmuter; the NPC taunted back "I already turned you into a frog"; and the player responded, in character and without missing a beat, "Yes, but she turned me back." This narration - which establishes the in-fiction meaning of the mechanically-prescribed events - preserves the player's conception of his/her PC and the character's relationship to his divine patron.And thinking about (1): sometimes, the player simply won't have enough resources left, and so even Captain America may end up too exhausted to stand up against Loki here and now, and have to acquiesce for the moment. Just as sometimes he doesn't have the stamina left to defeat Batroc in hand-to-hand combat. But this is where (2) becomes important: the narration here can still preserve character concept (eg it's not that Cap is a coward; rather, he's exhausted because of his heroic efforts).There are exceptions to (1) and (2) to be found in good RPGs - eg morale in Classic Traveller isn't something players can spend resources on (other than brining along a leader with Leader and/or Tactics skill), and the narration of the consequence tends to be fairly one-dimensional. I wouldn't envisage many contemporary RPGs using that sort of mechanic, though - I'm not saying it's bad (it happened in the last combat in my Traveller game, and the players weren't outraged or anything), but it tends to be something of a marker of the era when the rules were writeen.</blockquote>

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